Drowning in sunshine: My solo pity party
One woman’s attempt to let go, embrace the heat, and question the meaning of ambition in a sleepy Indian beachtown
Gosh it’s hot. I throw my slightly damp bed sheet off my heated body and crank up the rusty ventilator above my head. It’s morning number one on my little self-imposed holiday in the south of India, following a 2 week consultancy gig in India’s spice industry.
6am hatha morning yoga in the ashram next door with the hot guru, afternoon surf lessons in the ocean 100m from my room, jogs along the beach at sunset.
Nope, don’t do any of that. I sleep in most mornings until I wake up in my own puddle of sweat, force myself through a 15min meditation (letting go of all my good habits seems a little too drastic), and head over to the nearest restaurant for a morning feast of coconut rice and Kerala spiced curry.
The rest of the day I fight the boredom of a solo beach holiday (I was never one to bake on my sun-bed all day), read through my pile of edgy fiction, and beat myself up for feeling like I’m wasting away my precious days of holiday (the theme is, mind you: relaxation). It’s a full blown pity party, with a backdrop of palm trees and coconuts, and I’m the party’s only attending guest.
“The sound of the ocean is my magic potion”, blares from my Spotify.
In truth, the constant sound of the waves is driving me into insanity. I’m transported back to my stint living in a rat infested beach hut in Ghana (without a door) in my previous decade as an adventurer, and let me just say, I was not in a good place back then.
I remember writing in my diary (10 years exactly to this date!): “The ocean heals all wounds. With every wave your pain will come rolling in, over and over again. That eventually you will be sick of it. You will want to replace that pain with happiness, happiness and hope. Coming back to touch you, with every wave of the ocean.”
I called it the ‘Rolling Ocean Method’, no kidding. I guess these days we would call it art-therapy? Either way, should’ve patented that shit.
I end up watching day-time Netflix, which in my vocabulary is the epitome of dying ambition. Jep, it’s official: Valerie is no longer ambitious.
While I drag myself to lunch at a fancy schmancy resort nearby (and use my white priviledge card and a fake room number to dive into the infinity pool), I catch a young Indian woman, staff at the resort, around my age, staring at me, a sense of awe emanating from her brown-greenish eyes.
Most Indian women will never have the liberty to travel by themselves, to move freely through the world like I do, watch daytime Netflix in a random sleepy beach town, just because. The image of me lazily lounging on a pool chair, reading, bored, is in fact an image of ambition in its full glory. I’ve made it as a woman in this world. It’s all about the vantage point..
I flash my most ambitious smile at her and take out my notebook (which I always carry just in case genius hits). I write down my priorities for Q4 and I immediately feel better. I might be able to lie on any pool chair in the world, but hey at least I have my priorities straight. (Pathetic, I know).
Happy holidays ✌️
Love, Valerie
This Substack is a personal thought experiment shaped by my experience as a privileged white woman that grew up in Germany and Belgium, and now lives between the mountains and the sea in Portugal. Read more here. I acknowledge there are many other perspectives on living a soft(er) life, and I hope to invite diverse voices into this space as it grows.
So right. It's always about perspective. Thanks for the shift.